#welovethenhs takes over Twitter

The #welovethenhs is now by far and away the top trend amongst the people I follow on Twitter. However, surprisingly it isn’t trending anymore (Twitter searches for the most talk about subjects and highlights them as trending topics). Based on the volume of tweets that I’m seeing then #welovethenhs should be trending. I’m not the only UK public relations, social media and journalist user of Twitter to ‘smell a rat’. The conspiracy theorists amongst us are musing that Twitter has/is preventing it trending as it looks to as if there are approximately 10 mentions per second.

The Telegraph and Sky News have both reported it as being the top trending topic, but it’s disappeared as I write this post.

The Telegraph has a screen grab as evidence that it did trend:

The #welovethenhs hashtag was started (I haven’t yet tracked down who by) to help defend the National Health Service from the scurrilous attacks that are being launched on it by right-wing Republicans in the USA. President Obama has made healthcare reform a central pillar of his presidency, to right the many wrongs and injustices of the US healthcare system, which penalises the most vulnerable and rewards the most privileged â€“ the exact opposite of what most people would expect a healthcare system to do.

Most of the #welovethenhs tweets include short (140 character!) stories about people’s personal experiences of the NHS.

There is even a ‘Twibbon’ that will overlay a welovethenhs graphic over your Twitter avatar to show you’re supporting the campaign.